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Letters to the Editor: Why blame just English

July 2 2006, 1:00am, The Sunday Times

It was a British imperial cabinet, dominated by the Scots and the Welsh, and driven by Lloyd George, who was Welsh, that formally agreed on the catastrophic decision to send eight garrison battalions to Ireland on May 21, 1920. It was an English member of that cabinet, HAL Fisher, who on November 16, 1920, in the light of the “reprisals” inflicted by the Auxiliaries, complained to George that they “offend the conscience of English people”.

They did and do, and I am at one with Ken Loach on this. But, as so often, the English have been muddle-headed and timorous in their response to the injustices of the British Empire of which they seemed to form the central part. And Fisher’s words did nothing to…